Bang For Your Buck PPV Review: The 2014 Elimination Chamber PPV

We took the final exit on the Road to WrestleMania and the PPV highway, last night as heels fought heels, friends fought friends and Christian somehow eliminated Sheamus.

For those who missed the Royal Rumble review, the criteria for these reviews is simple: “Did I get my money’s worth?” in terms of the individual matches and the PPV as a whole, using the tried and true “what was this trying to do, and how well did it succeed” test of “quality”.

Each match is rated plus or minus on a sliding scale between 1 and -1, with matches worth multiple rewatches being +1, a just-quite-PPV quality match +/- 0, and things that make me reevaluate being a fan earning up to a -1 score. The scale is arbitrary, of course, but it’s based around the idea that a match will be fundamentally good, and give me things I wouldn’t see for free: major heel turns, definitive conclusions (which are different from clean finishes) and moves that don’t make their way to Raw.

The more of that in a match/show, the better Bang For Your Buck on the PPV. We’ll (eventually) keep a running tally for each PPV, and a handy list of PPVs we review to give you (and us) a better idea of what we thought was worth the time to check out in terms of matches and PPVs. As for the scale, it’s not particularly complicated but here are the basic levels (on a per-match basis):
As always, we’re going to be using what I said during the What’s the Worst That Could Happen preview to see how close I was to “predicting” what unfolded, how that stacked up to my beliefs of what they were “trying” to do and whether or not I got what I wanted out of the show. Enjoy!

Kickoff Match

THE BROTHERHOOD vs. RybAxel

Worst Case Scenario: It’s difficult to think of anything in particular that would be bad about this match — Ryback had a Step Brothers-themed singlet designed for it, for Christsakes — but there is definite concern regarding what’s going to happen with the Rhodes boys as a result of this match. So, while nothing in this actual match would be a “worst case scenario”, “the Rhodes brothers remain stagnant regardless of what happens” is close enough

It’s hard to tell where they are going with this, mostly because the entire game done changed with the WWE Network starting today. As such, guessing what exactly will happen next with the Rhodes Boys — especially considering how totally clean and normal this finish was — is almost impossible. Because of that, which is to say the inability of the match to compel me to want to find out what’s going to happen next, it wasn’t exactly the best possible performance, or even a particularly good one from anything other than a strictly “in-ring” perspective. Which is great, and important, but in a match like this, ultimately expected. Which would make this, at best, a “meh” match. However, since the match was part of the pre-show, it doesn’t count in the totals.